On October 2014, SPE Trisakti University Student Chapter has successfully held its biggest annual event of the year, PETROWEEK 2014, with the theme “The Energy Compass”. It is with the hope of understanding where the world’s energy development is going in terms of technology advancements and environmental awareness that this theme is thoughtfully made.

Contact with the Organizers: spe_trisakti@yahoo.com

PETROWEEK 2014 is divided into its series of Pre-Events, Main Events, and Closing Events. Participants of this event varies from High School students, Undergraduate Engineering students, to professionals in the oil & gas industry.

The Pre-event consisted of SPE Goes To School and SPE Earth Day. SPE Goes To School was held with the purpose of introducing the oil and gas industry to the young generation, hoping that there would be more of the young generation interested in choosing the energy industry as their career path. Schools visited was SMA 8 Jakarta and SMA 82 Jakarta. SPE Earth Day was held as an act of giving back to nature after the countless benefits that we humans had all received. Mangrove Reforestation and Coral Planting was done during the event.

The Main Event, consisting of a 2-day Grand Seminar, Team Building Session, International Conference, and the Energy Debate. On the 2-day Grand Seminar, we were very honored to be joined by valuable key speakers from Schlumberger, Weatherford, Halliburton, and YCAB (Ms. Veronica Colondam). The International Conference and Energy Debate were also held successfully, involving Engineering Student Invitees from other student chapters.

Then finally, PETROWEEK 2014 was closed with 2 activities, SPE Fun Day and the SPE Cultural & Family Dinner. Everyone took pictures, shared their experiences in their student chapters, and their hopes of better teamwork and bond among chapters in the future. Positive appraisals given by Sponsors, Speakers, and Participants validated the success of PETROWEEK 2014 and made all our hard work worth-while.

If we talk about first exploratory well which was drilled in the region of undivided sub-continent (now Pakistan) then facts highlighted that it was drilled in1866 by Punjab Oriental State, right after seven years of World’s 1st well drilled in USA to a depth of 65ft.
With the passage of time, discovery of oil in province of Balochistan was the main success where thirteen shallow wells produced 25,000 barrels of oil between 1885 and 1892. Here one fact should be made clear that during this early phase all the drilling activities were controlled by The Government of Indio-Pak.
Unfortunately, they were unable to find such a reserve which exhibit commercial storage until 1910. Later on Attock Oil Company (AOC) made a first commercial oil discovery (4.31 MMbo) in 1915, in Punjab province. This achievement leads to attract many exploration companies to utilize their investment in region of sub-continent. As consequences three oil fields were established consecutively in 1936, 1944 and 1946 by joint venture of Attock Oil company (AOC) and Burmah Oil Company (BOC).
After the independence of Pakistan in 1947, the Government of Pakistan issued Regulation of Mines and Oilfields and Mineral Development Act 1948 and classified rules under this Act in 1949. The main objective of this Act was to provide regulatory authority to encourage and accelerate petroleum exploration and production activities in the country.
BOC and AOC transferred its exploration activities to local companies, by establishing Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) and Pakistan Oilfields Limited (POL) respectively.
After establishment of PPL & POL, a well drilled on the Sui structure (located in Balochistan Province), made the inaugural discovery of one of the largest reserves of natural gas and recoverable reserves were estimated to be over 10 trillion cubic feet (TCF) which is equivalent to about 1 billion barrels of oil. This discovery was a milestone towards the development & prosperity of petroleum industry in Pakistan which made numerous E&P companies attentive towards this part of globe.
In order to drill more exploratory wells in prospective areas, permits were issued to Standard Vacuum Oil Company (1954), Hunt International Oil Company (1955), Shell Oil Company (1956), Sun Oil Company (1957) and Tidewater (1958) respectively by the Government of Pakistan which led to further discoveries of natural gas reserves.
In spite of new gas discoveries during this time frame, the exploration activities towards the oil discoveries exhibit negative trend.
By keeping this trend in focus Government of Pakistan decided to establish the state oil exploration company and in 1961 a joint stock company under the name of Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) was established which expands moving scheme of prosperous profile with the small gas discovery at Sindh province in 1965, followed by discovery of oil reserve at Potwar region of Punjab in 1968.
Later on gas reserve at Sindh in 1970, Punjab in 1972, then Sindh in 1973 and gas/ condensate at Punjab in 1975 were discovered by the same company.
Meanwhile POL discovered oil at Punjab province in 1968 and American Oil Company (AMOCO) discovered a small gas accumulation at Balochistan province in 1975.
After the modification of petroleum regulations in 1976, British Petroleum a USA Company came to Pakistan and started its activities and has drilled 65 discovery wells in Pakistan.
This opened a new oil province and broke the tradition in the north region. After Sui (Balochistan), the discovery of oil in the Southern Basin was the second milestone in search for hydrocarbons in Pakistan and this area has attained the distinction of contributing 59% of the total oil production of the country.
Following journey of success OGDCL discovered a large gas storage in Eocene Carbonates of Middle Indus Basin in 1989 and fortunately in the same year, Eni made a gas discovery in Sandstone (Cretaceous) in south region lead to discover number of significant gas reserves in 1993 and then in 1998 by OMV of Austria followed by Mari Gas Company Ltd (MGCL) in 1999, in 2002 Petronas of Malaysia provide its services to reveal hydrocarbon bearing zones.
North Frontier Province of Pakistan (NWFP) deviates attention of industrial progress when MOL of Hungry in 2002 and as well as in 2005 made discovery of reserves which has reinforced the belief of many Geologist that this region can host large hydrocarbon reserves and recently nine blocks have been awarded in this province.
Offshore exploration which had started in 1961 remained limited to the drilling of only eleven exploratory wells due to lack of success and high drilling cost.
Current statistics reveals that only four blocks in the offshore region are held under license, two by Total, one by Shell and the fourth one is by British Gas.

Two of the biggest energy companies could soon become one. Shares of companies went up Halliburton +2,40% and Baker Hughes +1,94% after confirmation that the two oil companies are in talks to merge. A merger is an effort to save costs.
Both Halliburton and Baker Hughes are oilfield service companies, and this potential deal is to help both companies weather falling oil prices, as oil-services customers, exploration and production companies, are not spending as much due to falling oil prices. The two companies currently help oil companies by selling equipment, renting tools or supplying labor, so falling prices make oil production less profitable. Their businesses are threatened if their clients cut production or demand better prices from them. Let’s remind that for the past three months, oil prices have gone down by about 25% and now price of oil is the lowest in the last four years (today’s price $ 75.82/bbl)
In a statement on 13th November, Baker Hughes said it is in “preliminary discussions” with Halliburton about a “potential business combination.”
A merged company would be worth $67 billion and have about 140,000 employees. But it would still be only half the size of industry leader Schlumberger.
If the deal goes through, it would be one of the largest energy deals in recent years.

China has the world’s largest technically recoverable unconventional oil and gas reserves. To unlock the potential of China’s unconventional gas reserves, the Chinese government has unveiled a string of policies to boost production.

On December 31st, 2011, China National Energy Bureau officially released China’s “the 12th five-year plan of Coalbed Methane’s development and utilization” (hereinafter referred to as the “Plan”). Plan point out that the national Coalbed Methane production will reach 30 billion cubic meters by 2015, which is 20 times more than the capacity of 2010.
On 16th, March, 2012, China national energy bureau officially released the “China Shale Gas Development Plan (2011-2015)”which point out that the national shale gas production will reach 6.5 billion cubic meters by 2015 and aim to reach 60-100 billion cubic meters by 2020. On 21, January, 2013,China Ministry of Land and Resources awarded 19 shale gas blocks to 16 domestic companies which comprise six state-owned enterprises, eight enterprises owned by local governments and two private-owned companies .The total investment for all 19 blocks is expected to be Yuan 12.8 billion ($2.06 billion) within the first three years of exploration. In addition, the ministry of land and resources of China will start the 3rd round large-scale shale gas block auction in 2014. There is no doubt that the development of unconventional oil & gas will begin its golden period of development in China.
So building on the massive success of the past SIX Unconventional Oil & Gas Events organized by GICC Group, the 7th China Unconventional Oil & Gas Summit and Exhibition 2015 has generated a timely and strategic three-day program to discuss the promotion policies, investment and the exploration and production technologies in the field of coalbed methane & shale gas industry. This unique gathering will be a must-attend event for industry professionals by bringing together China national oil companies, energy regulators, IOCs, local oil service companies, international producers, suppliers, seismic, drilling and oilfield service companies.

The Arctic region has big potential for hydrocarbon production. According to the estimates, prepared by the US Geological Survey USGS in 2008, there might be 22% of undiscovered oil and gas resources, including 13% undiscovered petroleum resources. More than three-quarters of these resources are located in areas of marine waters in USA, Canada, Greenland, Norway and Russia, which recently was quite succesful in its operations.

On 27th September Rosneft and ExxonMobil announced, that they had discovered oil in the Kara Sea, 250 km clear off the inland of the Russian Federation. The drilling was completed in record time – in one and a half month. The project is developing on three oil and gas fields in the north-east coast of the island called Sakhalin.

It all started in 2011, when Rosneft signed an agreement with US oil company ExxonMobil. The contract was worth 3.2 billion dollars. In August 2013 Karmorneftegaz, a joint venture Rosneft and ExxonMobil, began drilling in the area of oil field called East-Prinovozemelsky. The works were carried out despite the sanctions imposed on Russia.

The succesful well was drilled to the depth of 2113 meters; the sea depth at the drilling site was 81 meters. The head of Rosneft Igor Sechin said that gas reserves are estimated to be about 338 million cubic meters and oil- to 100 million tons. “This is our united victory, it was achieved thanks to our friends and partners from ExxonMobil, Nord Atlantic Drilling, Schlumberger, Halliburton, Weatherford, Baker, Trendsetter, FMC.”- Sechin summarised. According to estimates, Kara Sea may be rich in similar deposits of oil as Saudi Arabia. Igor Sechin said that the oil field, where the discovery was made, is called “Pabieda”, from the Russian – victory. Despite this success, experts aren’t sure whether oil from the wellbore can be extracted on a commercial scale, that’s why Rosneft will analyze more samples.

The media in Moscow informed lately, that Exxon Mobil, due to sanctions, suspended cooperation with Rosneft on the sea in the Arctic.

The OIES report also analyzes two other projects in the Arctic- Norwegian Snohvit (gas field) and Russian Prirazlomnoye (petroleum). Both of them are currently at the stage of hydrocarbon extraction. Despite the fact that in both cases the mining process was started, the authors note that it was very late and significantly above the originally projected cost.

However, as BiznesAlert.pl reported, Igor Sechin told to Der Spiegel that Rosneft, by 2030, will have invested 400 billion dollars in Arctic operations.

On the European gas market we should not expect drastic changes: the share of natural gas from Russia will remain significant, and its price will be competitive. Not until after 2030 the price will slightly decrease, but Russia will compensate that itself by an increase in the supply of LNG to Europe.

These are the main conclusions from comprehensive report about European gas market drawn by the Washington Brookings Institution. Report predicts that even in the case of absence of gas transit through Ukraine, or if European Commission will prohibit the construction of South Stream pipeline from Russia to Italy, it wouldn’t have significant effects on the origin of natural gas in Europe. The conclusion is that regardless of the different hypothetical scenarios, Europe will still need Russian gas.

The authors assume that the demand for gas in Europe will start to grow from 2015, but will return to the pre-crisis level (2008) in 2040. They also estimate that domestic gas production in Europe will fall to 208 billion cubic meters in 2020, and then will decrease slightly to 199 billion cubic meters in 2040, even assuming that the production of shale gas in 2040 will be about 20 billion cubic meters. The authors based their calculations on the assumption that 80% of shale gas production will take place in the UK and Poland, which is “very optimistic assumption”.

The report also refers to other alternative sources of supply, such as an increase in imports by the South Corridor or increase domestic production of shale gas. These options are important in themselves, but there is no evidence that these alternative supplies will lead to changes in the European gas supply system in the near future.

We would like to present an article written by Zuzanna Marchant from Charles Maxwell – the Organizer of

Central and Eastern Europe Shale Gas and Oil Summit 2015Two-day conference and exhibit covering all important aspects of shale gas exploration in Central and Eastern Europe

Cheaper and environmentally-safe: Is this the future of Polish shale?

Blue Gas Competition – Supporting development of new technologies for shale gas extraction.

The second Blue Gas Competition results are in and this year only a handful of projects were deemed promising enough to secure financing. It’s exciting news for those working on the projects as well as for the Polish shale gas industry.

Among the projects receiving over 50mln PLN in combined financing from the Blue Gas competition is DIOX4SHELL. This particular project focuses on using liquid CO2 (but in a completely different way to the one some companies use when utilising liquid CO2 for gas extraction) instead of water and chemicals for hydraulic fracturing. PGNiG is the project leader and the research is being done by academics from WAT, AGH and PW (Military University of Technology, AGH University of Science and Technology and Warsaw University of Technology). Researchers from WAT patented their designs two years ago and titled their project: “Development of guidelines for design of innovative technology of shale gas recovery with the use of liquid CO2 on the base of numerical and experimental research –DIOX4SHELL”. After independent experts (five in each case, at least two of whom had to be from overseas) evaluated each of the qualified projects, DIOX4SHELL was awarded 92.5 points out of 100.

It’s surprising that this project has not been picked up by any media in Poland yet as it appears to be a technological breakthrough for the industry – both, from the operational and environmental perspective. The techniques used right now are far from perfect in either case, while this method is environmentally safe, does not require the use of water and added chemicals, and carries no risk of causing local earthquakes.

It would also be cheaper from the current method and extract four times more methane, as the DIOX4SHELL system was designed to work with the quirks of the Polish shale rock, rather than against them, as it has been so far.

This is wonderful news since, after the initial influx of investment in Poland, things have slowed down due to the challenging geology and political hiccups.

Out of 14 companies, which performed at least one exploratory drill in Poland, 5 are now gone. Apparently the results of their explorations were much worse than expected. Dorota Gajewska, press spokesperson for PGNiG told ‘Rzeczpospolita’ that those first wells showed that searching for shale gas in Poland is a geological and technical challenge.

To make matters worse, the Polish legal framework regarding hydrocarbon exploration and extraction was prohibitive for investors and many decided that Poland was simply not worth the effort.

But now, the new hydrocarbon bill is supposed to fix the legal situation, making life much easier for investors, while innovations like the ones financed by the Blue Gas competition should help with the geological challenges.

The method

After long research by the WAT team, the method developed is designed to extract shale gas and combine it with underground storing of CO2. According to Dr Miedzińska: “It differs immensely from the ones currently used by some companies. They use CO2 instead of water, so their fracking is simply pumping huge amounts of liquid, under high pressure, down towards the deposits, which causes fractures and through that a higher permeability of rocks, which leads to the extraction of gas. Unfortunately, with this method we also extract back the CO2.”

What the designed method involves is introducing “CO2 into the deposits as supercritical fluid – an incredibly cold liquid but under low pressure, with low viscosity and high mobility of molecules. This liquid, due to the temperature in the deposit (above 100 degrees Celsius) expands and causes fracturing. So we’re using a different physical process. We’re also planning to use this process not in one well but in several horizontal wells, which will increase its effectiveness.”

“Another phenomenon that works in our favour is the process of preferential adsorbtion of CO2 towards CH4 in the Polish shale. What it means is that normally most of the shale gas is adsorbed – or “attached” – to the porous surface of shale rock, but CO2 is able to “rip off” the methane particles and replace them – thus, we have a safe process of storing CO2 and increase, as much as by a factor of four the amount of extracted methane.”

The wait

This particular project should develop the required technology within the next two years (their work starts in December). The team of DIOX4SHELL researchers plan on solving all construction problems so that the method would available to be used in real conditions after those two years.

Their project, research and tested theories have proven so promising that they earned them the funding. However, as wonderful as it is that this new technology to reduce the costs and the controversy is in the making, for the investors, operators and the government it means another two years of waiting, while they struggle to extract viable amounts of shale gas by using the current methods.

Investing in innovation

It’s interesting to see how much the Polish government hopes to develop the shale gas sector. The financing differs for each Blue Gas project but the main aim of the programme is the development of technologies related to shale gas extraction and their implementation as well as encouraging entrepreneurs to invest in the R&D activities.

Research and development like this is crucial to the success of the shale gas industry in Poland reducing costs and attracting further investment. And if DIOX4SHELL is all it’s aiming to become – it could change the way shale gas is extracted not only in Poland, but also internationally.

Blue Gas Background

To those unfamiliar with the Blue Gas competition, here is some background (quoted from NCBR and ARP websites):

“The programme is a joint undertaking of National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) and Industrial Development Agency (ARP S.A.) and it is focused on supporting integrated large R&D projects, testing results in pilot scale and commercialization of innovative technologies in the area of shale gas extraction.”

The applications come from research-industrial consortia and they need to meet certain criteria: they have to design innovative technology related to shale gas extraction; which has to be tested in real conditions; and the project leader has to be an entrepreneur interested in implementation of the technology elaborated within the project.